Monthly Archives: April 2011

I find it ironic that in an age full of irony with a people tuned to understanding layers of meaning taking place Palm Sunday in some quarters is being transformed into Passion Sunday. Well not at St. Mark in West Henrietta. Since we have been reading from St. John’s Gospel, I took the Triumphal Entry text for this week.

The King comes anyway is a refrain used. Everyone at that first Palm Sunday was clueless. The King came anyway. And truth be told we are usually pretty clueless ourselves. The King comes anyway. He comes in waters of baptism. He comes in bread and wine. He comes in the simple proclamation – do not be afraid, daughters of Zion. The king comes anyway, full of grace and truth. We ask in are prayers that he come to us also.

If you had the power to raise the dead, but it cost you your life, would you do it?

That is the central question. I think we could answer that question no. Jesus answered that question yes.

There are a whole bunch of spiritual truths that come from the sacrifice and resurrection pattern. Not the least is the one who holds onto his life will lose it, but the one who loses his life for me, will find it. It’s Good Friday and Easter. You don’t get one without the other. Each one corresponds to a theory of want Jesus did for us – substitute and victory. They are both tied in each other. A church that only preaches one is missing something…

This text is too big. A man goes from being blind through various confessions to the worship of Christ at the end. From the point of his healing, until that end, the story is about Jesus but Jesus himself is absent. It’s a tight allegory on a Christian life with the counter-point of the pharisees deepening knowledge and surety of things that are false. Its also the type of text that really needs two way communication. Its the type of think you wrestle with with others.